Letters & Sounds

Phonological Awareness

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What is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is the foundation for learning to read.
It’s the ability to recognize and work with sounds in spoken language.
Some kids pick it up naturally, but others need more help with it.

What are some examples of Phonological Awareness in a child?

Picking out words that rhyme
Counting the number of syllables in a word
Noticing sound repetition (“Susie sold six salami sandwiches”)

Phonological Awareness - Kindergarten Unit 1

Over the course of 10 lessons, students will sing songs and play games that help them build phonological awareness. These lessons strengthen students' skills in three key areas: hearing and identifying rhymes, isolating the initial sounds in words, and segmenting and blending compound words.

Hearing and Identifying Rhymes

The first lessons have students simply repeat rhyming words after Natalie. Eventually, students move to locating rhyming words. Natalie says a word and students look across a few picture cards to find one that rhymes with it.

Isolating Initial Sounds

In each lesson students will slowly stretch a word down their arm and catch the first sound of the word. For example, if the word is dog, they would say /ddddooooogggg/ /d/ /d/.

Segmenting and Blending Compound Words

Across the unit, students will move from simply blending parts of compound words together to also segmenting a word presented to them. At first, Natalie will provide two words, such as rain and bow. Students will repeat those words and then blend them together: rainbow. In later sessions, students will segment compound words into syllables. For example, Natalie might say, “suitcase.” Students will repeat the word and then break it into parts: suit - case.

Besides working on these four “core skills,” each day Natalie will also begin and end with songs and activities to further strengthen students' phonological awareness. She and her sidekick, Mabel, will playfully guide kids as they sing and act out ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,’ sing the alphabet while matching letter names to upper and lower case letters, and use picture cards to hunt for matching words. Sit back and watch as students gleefully sing, move, and play, all the while building the skills necessary to read and write.

Phonological Awareness -Kindergarten Unit 2

Over the course of 10 lessons, students will sing songs and play games that help them build phonological awareness. Each video consists of activities, or games, that are designed to strengthen students' ability to hear and identify rhymes, isolate the initial and final sounds in words, segment and blend compound words, add and delete syllables in compound words, and strengthen alphabet knowledge. These activities will build on the work started in Unit 1.

Students will continue to develop the skill of rhyming by identifying rhyming words. Rebecca says two words and students signal if the two words rhyme or not.

Students will continue the work of isolating initial sounds, and Rebecca will add the skill of isolating final sounds. She will introduce this work with a new song.

Students will continue to work on blending and segmenting parts of words. In this unit, though, they will move from working with the small words in compound words to working with syllables, as well.

Also new will be the work of manipulating parts of words, and this has several parts. Students will first add parts to words: For example, Rebecca will ask students to say play and then add time to the end and say the new word - playtime. Later in the unit, students will delete words from compound words, and they will eventually substitute words. For example, when performing substitution, students would start with playground, remove ground, then add time to make playtime. If you are thinking that this complex phonological work, you are right! However, students will continue the work of manipulation in other units, too, and will eventually grow towards manipulating even smaller word parts.

In each session students will study, sing, or chant the alphabet chart to support the connection between letters and sounds.

The activities throughout the unit will progress systematically to further strengthen students' phonological awareness. Rebecca and Mabel will guide the children through playful activities to keep this work fresh and fun, and Mabel even brings along toys, shapes, and different colored markers to help her “students” play with word parts and sounds.

Phonological Awareness- Kindergarten Unit 3

Across these ten sessions, your students will continue to practice and build on the skills that they’ve worked on in the previous two units.

Having worked on recognizing rhyming words, your students will now choose a rhyming word from two choices and, by the end of this unit, they’ll also work on producing rhyming words.

Students will continue isolating both initial and final sounds. Towards the end of this unit, your students will work on connecting an initial phoneme with its grapheme by writing a letter that represents the sound they’ve isolated.

The work of blending, segmenting, and manipulating continues, this time with even smaller units. Students will work on blending a word part with a final sound, and will also work on segmenting an onset with from the remainder of the word (rime). Students will also add an initial sound to a word, delete initial consonants, and substitute initial sounds. This work with smaller units of sound represents a significant next step for your students as they grow towards stronger phonemic awareness, which you will undoubtedly see in their reading and writing.

Also supportive of students’ reading and writing is the work with the alphabet chart and written letters in this unit. Across sessions, students will read the alphabet chart, play letter guessing games, and build rhymes using the alphabet chart. Just as your students are growing as writers, Mabel is at well! Mabel will call on your students to help her with her writing by counting the number of words in her sentences. This work sets your students up to write sentences inside of writing workshop.

Just as your students will enjoy helping Mabel with her writing, they’ll enjoy the other fun touches that Natalie brings to this work. Every lesson features unique songs, riddles, and gestures that will engage kids’ participation.

Phonological Awareness - Kindergarten Unit 4 (can also be used as 1st Grade Unit 1)

This phonological awareness unit is designed to especially support readers and writers working with individual phonemes and vowel sounds, and you’ll find that your students will benefit from it whether they are kindergartners or first graders. Because this unit has such broad appeal, it features the beloved phonics mascots from both grades, Mabel and Rasheed.

Every lesson begins with a visit from either Mabel or Rasheed. They come with some writing, and, of course, they need your students’ help. Every day, Angela will lead your students through some activities designed to both help Mabel and Rasheed with their writing and support phonological awareness. The activities support foundational phonological skills for your students.

Rhyming: Lessons in this unit focus on rhyme production. Angela will provide a word, and your students will come up with a word (or words!) that rhyme with it.

Isolating: As this unit starts, your students will work on isolating beginning and middle sounds. Towards the end, Angela will add the challenge of isolating ending sounds. Across the unit, beginning and ending sounds will include digraphs.

Blending and Segmenting: Across the entire unit, your students will blend and segment CVC words, CCVC words, and CVCC words.

Manipulating: The work of manipulation continues, and, in this unit, students will work with phonemes, the smallest unit of sound. They will add and delete initial phonemes. Across the unit, they will move from substituting initial phonemes, to substituting middle phonemes.

Some of the skills practiced in this unit also support print work.

Word Awareness: Whenever Rasheed and Mabel bring a story or a how-to book, your students will be asked to count the words in each sentence. We hope this time both gives your students the chance to build their word awareness, and also helps them to hear the kind of writing they will be doing during writing workshop.

Alphabet Practice: Across the unit, students will play a game called Name It and Sound It, where Angela will show a consonant, vowel, or digraph, and ask your students to say its name and its sound. Students will work in random order, to help with automaticity.

As your students progress through this unit, you’ll see them working with words and sounds in sophisticated ways, and you’ll see transfer between these phonological awareness skills and reading and writing. You’ll want to encourage this transfer by reminding students to stretch sounds and use letters and sounds to help them read and write.

Phonological Awareness-Kindergarten Unit 5 (can also be used as 1st Grade Unit 2)

This unit features the most advanced phonological awareness skills that kindergartners will practice. The unit is also an ideal review for first graders, so you’ll find that both Mabel and Rasheed, the kindergarten and first grade phonics mascots, are featured throughout. If your students have completed previous virtual phonological awareness units, they’ll remember Ms Rebecca, this unit’s teacher. Over the course of this unit, students will strengthen their skills in several key areas and phonological and phonemic awareness.

Rhyming: Across this unit, students will hear words and produce rhymes for those words. Rebecca engages students in “Rhyme Riddles,” where she names out a word and asks students to come up with a word that rhymes with it.

Isolating Sounds: Students will practice this skill in multiple ways across this unit. Rebecca will sometimes name out two words and ask students to name the beginning sound. Other times, students will hear only one word. Sometimes, this activity is included in some work with poems, where students will hear words from a poem and name the beginning sound. In this unit, all of the beginning sounds will be blends. Students will also isolate middle sounds across the unit.

Blending and Segmenting: These important foundational skills are a major part of this unit. Students will hear sounds and blend them, and will also hear entire words and segment them into individual sounds. Across the unit, Elkonin boxes are used for additional support.

Manipulation: Phoneme manipulation includes adding, deleting, and substituting individual sounds in words. This unit begins by focusing on blends. Across the unit, students will grow towards working with individual phonemes, an even smaller unit of sound. Substitution activities in particular will build across the unit, and students will move towards substituting ending and middle sounds.

Across this unit, we’ve folded in print work. For example, when blending, students will sometimes work with letters, naming out the sounds and then blending them for greater independence. Another activity introduced later in the unit is called Name It Sound It, where students will see an individual letter or a blend, and they will say its name and its sound. Rebecca will also work with several familiar poems and songs across the unit, challenging your students to count the words in those poems and locate rhymes and blends in those words.

We hope that you and your students enjoy this final unit.

Phonological Awareness-1st Grade- Unit 1

This unit features advanced phonological awareness skills to solidify students’ ability to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds. If your students have completed previous virtual phonological awareness units, they’ll remember Ms Natalie, this unit’s teacher. Over the course of this unit, students will strengthen their skills in several key areas, phonemic proficiency, manipulating phonemes and using those phonological skills to read and write words. Because reading and writing are reciprocal processes, the work children do when they are listening to sounds in spoken words to help them write those words, ends up helping them also read those words with more automaticity, with the goal in mind of connecting phonological awareness, listening to phonemes, to phonics, reading and writing of words.

Main Skills:

Isolating Sounds: Students will practice this skill in multiple ways across this unit. Natalie will sometimes say a word and ask students to name the beginning sound. Other times, students will isolate middle sounds across the unit. This unit teaches students to isolate the vowel and determine if the vowel is a short or long sound.

Blending and Segmenting: These important foundational skills are a major part of this unit. Students will hear sounds and blend them, and will also hear entire words and segment them into individual sounds. Across the unit, Elkonin boxes are used for additional support.

Manipulation: Phoneme manipulation includes adding, deleting, and substituting individual sounds in words. Students will hear sounds added or deleted from words and at times write down the word, thinking about the letter that is changing to make that sound manipulation. Substitution activities in particular will build across the unit, and students will move towards substituting ending and middle sounds.

Main Methods of Teaching to Transfer Phonological Awareness to Phonics:

Making Words: This activity invites students to manipulate letters in ways that allow them to make discoveries about how words go. Natalie moves students from one word to the next by giving directions that tell children to change one part of the word. For instance when Natalie says ‘change click to clock,’ students are discovering that changing the vowel in the word can make a completely different word. This activity reinforces hearing and isolating sounds in words.

Onset/Rime Word Building: This activity teaches students to use onsets and rimes to build new words. Students are given a collection of onsets—initial consonants, blends, or digraphs—and they use those onsets to build words with a given rime. Natalie will ask students to monitor for sense, making sure they build real words.

Writing and Reading by Analogy: This activity teaches students to use word parts they know in familiar words and apply the same pattern to new words. When writing by analogy, students read a word and then use the same spelling pattern to write other words. For instance, if students know the word read, then they can use the spelling pattern -ea, to write bean or eat.

When reading by analogy, students read a word and then continue to read more words that follow the same pattern. For instance, if students know the word will, they can read spill and chill.

Dictation: This activity guides students to hear the individual sounds in a word and record the corresponding letters that go with those sounds. Natalie will ask students to say a word slowly, listen to each sound and then prompt students to write the word. We hope that you and your students enjoy this unit, as they continue to grow in hearing, reading, and writing the sounds in words. Session 1

Phonological Awareness-1st Grade-Unit 2

This unit continues the advanced phonological awareness skills to solidify students’ ability to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds. Over the course of this unit, students will strengthen their skills in several key areas, phonemic proficiency, manipulating phonemes and using those phonological skills to read and write words. This unit continues connecting phonological awareness, listening to phonemes, to phonics, reading and writing of words. This unit specifically teaches vowel teams, like ee, ea, ai, ay, ou, ow, and many more.

Phonological Awareness-1st Grade-Unit 3

This is the final unit in the first grade sequence of advanced phonological awareness skills to solidify students’ ability to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds. Over the course of this unit, students will strengthen their skills in several key areas, phonemic proficiency, manipulating phonemes and using those phonological skills to read and write words. This unit continues connecting phonological awareness, listening to phonemes, to phonics, reading and writing of words. This unit reinforces vowel teams, teaches -r controlled vowels, and listening to multisyllabic words.

Phonological Awareness-2nd Grade-Review Unit A

This unit features advanced phonological awareness skills to solidify students’ ability to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds. If your students have completed previous virtual phonological awareness units, they’ll remember Ms Natalie, this unit’s teacher. Over the course of this unit, students will strengthen their skills in several key areas, phonemic proficiency, manipulating phonemes and using those phonological skills to read and write words. Because reading and writing are reciprocal processes, the work children do when they are listening to sounds in spoken words to help them write those words, ends up helping them also read those words with more automaticity, with the goal in mind of connecting phonological awareness, listening to phonemes, to phonics, reading and writing of words.

Main Skills:

Isolating Sounds: Students will practice this skill in multiple ways across this unit. Natalie will sometimes say a word and ask students to name the beginning sound. Other times, students will isolate middle sounds across the unit. This unit teaches students to isolate the vowel and determine if the vowel is a short or long sound.

Blending and Segmenting: These important foundational skills are a major part of this unit. Students will hear sounds and blend them, and will also hear entire words and segment them into individual sounds. Across the unit, Elkonin boxes are used for additional support.

Manipulation: Phoneme manipulation includes adding, deleting, and substituting individual sounds in words. Students will hear sounds added or deleted from words and at times write down the word, thinking about the letter that is changing to make that sound manipulation. Substitution activities in particular will build across the unit, and students will move towards substituting ending and middle sounds.

Main Methods of Teaching to Transfer Phonological Awareness to Phonics:

Making Words: This activity invites students to manipulate letters in ways that allow them to make discoveries about how words go. Natalie moves students from one word to the next by giving directions that tell children to change one part of the word. For instance when Natalie says ‘change click to clock,’ students are discovering that changing the vowel in the word can make a completely different word. This activity reinforces hearing and isolating sounds in words.

Onset/Rime Word Building: This activity teaches students to use onsets and rimes to build new words. Students are given a collection of onsets—initial consonants, blends, or digraphs—and they use those onsets to build words with a given rime. Natalie will ask students to monitor for sense, making sure they build real words.

Writing and Reading by Analogy: This activity teaches students to use word parts they know in familiar words and apply the same pattern to new words. When writing by analogy, students read a word and then use the same spelling pattern to write other words. For instance, if students know the word read, then they can use the spelling pattern -ea, to write bean or eat. When reading by analogy, students read a word and then continue to read more words that follow the same pattern. For instance, if students know the word will, they can read spill and chill.

Dictation: This activity guides students to hear the individual sounds in a word and record the corresponding letters that go with those sounds. Natalie will ask students to say a word slowly, listen to each sound and then prompt students to write the word. We hope that you and your students enjoy this unit, as they continue to grow in hearing, reading, and writing the sounds in words.

Phonological Awareness-2nd Grade-Review Unit B

This unit continues the advanced phonological awareness skills to solidify students’ ability to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds. Over the course of this unit, students will strengthen their skills in several key areas, phonemic proficiency, manipulating phonemes and using those phonological skills to read and write words. This unit continues connecting phonological awareness, listening to phonemes, to phonics, reading and writing of words. This unit specifically teaches vowel teams, like ee, ea, ai, ay, ou, ow, and many more.

Phonological Awareness-2nd Grade-Review Unit C

This is the final unit in the first grade sequence of advanced phonological awareness skills to solidify students’ ability to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds. Over the course of this unit, students will strengthen their skills in several key areas, phonemic proficiency, manipulating phonemes and using those phonological skills to read and write words. This unit continues connecting phonological awareness, listening to phonemes, to phonics, reading and writing of words. This unit reinforces vowel teams, teaches -r controlled vowels, and listening to multisyllabic words.

Phonological Awareness-2nd Grade- Unit 1

This is the first unit in the second grade sequence of advanced phonological awareness skills to solidify students’ ability to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds. Over the course of this unit, students will strengthen their skills in several key areas, phonemic proficiency, manipulating phonemes and using those phonological skills to read and write words. This unit continues connecting phonological awareness, listening to phonemes, to phonics, reading and writing of words. This unit reinforces vowel teams, teaches -r controlled vowels, and listening to multisyllabic words.

Main Skills:

Isolating Sounds: Students will practice this skill in multiple ways across this unit. Natalie will sometimes say a word and ask students to name the beginning sound. Other times, students will isolate middle sounds across the unit. This unit teaches students to isolate the vowel and determine if the vowel is short or long sound.

Blending and Segmenting: These important foundational skills are a major part of this unit. Students will hear sounds and blend them, and will also hear entire words and segment them into individual sounds. Across the unit, Elkonin boxes are used for additional support.

Manipulation: Phoneme manipulation includes adding, deleting, and substituting individual sounds in words. Students will hear sounds added or deleted from words and at times write down the word, thinking about the letter that is changing to make that sound manipulation. Substitution activities in particular will build across the unit, and students will move towards substituting ending and middle sounds.

Main Methods of Teaching to Transfer Phonological Awareness to Phonics:

Word Ladders: This activity invites students to manipulate letters in ways that allow them to make discoveries about how words go. Natalie moves students from one word to the next by giving directions that tell children to change one part of the word. For instance when Natalie says ‘change click to clock’, students are discovering that changing the vowel in the word can make a completely different word. This activity reinforces hearing and isolating sounds in words.

Onset/Rime Word Building: This activity teaches students to use onsets and rimes to build new words. Students are given a collection of onsets—initial consonants, blends, or digraphs—and they use those onsets to build words with a given rime. Natalie will ask students to monitor for sense, making sure they know the meaning of the words they write.

Students will need a whiteboard and a maker, or pen and paper, for each lesson.

Phonological Awareness-2nd Grade-Unit 2

This is the second and final unit in the second grade sequence of advanced phonological awareness skills to solidify students’ ability to blend, segment, and manipulate sounds and parts of words. This unit continues connecting phonological awareness, listening to phonemes, to phonics, reading and writing of words. This unit works mostly with multisyllabic words.

Main Methods of Teaching to Transfer Phonological Awareness to Phonics

Word Ladders: This activity invites students to manipulate letters and word parts in ways that allow them to make discoveries about how words go. Natalie moves students from one word to the next by giving directions that tell children to change one part of the word. In this unit, Natalie manipulates compound words, deleting and adding syllables.

Word Building: This activity teaches students to use word parts to build new words. Students are given a collection of one syllable words, and they use those words to build new, longer words.

Writing and Reading by Analogy: This activity teaches students to use word parts they know in familiar words and apply the same pattern to new words. When writing by analogy, students read a word and then use the same spelling pattern to write other words. For instance, if students know the word comic, then they can use the spelling pattern -ic, to write public.

When reading by analogy, students read a word and then continue to read more words that follow the same pattern.

Students will need a whiteboard and a marker, or pen and paper, for each lesson.